I Hope Women Can Bring a Better World

In our time greed and shameless were walking in our towns, government institutions, federal courts and huge investment sectors. They had been creating few rotten rich while the majority of the citizens were starving. Most of the civil servants, they can pay their transportation and buy cloth once in a year and send their children to governmental schools. Others, who work in the private sectors, had been hired with small salaries. They walk half of the way to work and pay half of the way to be on time on their desks. Their employers mistreating them the way they wanted. When you work in a company (PLC), your good relationship with the owners keeps your job. If you are a good office politician, your job is secured, or else you‘ll lose it any time. There was a lot of insecurity around the working class. Most of the business owners have connection with one or more corrupted government official behind them. When you are sucked from your office, you don’t have to ask for a pay which you supposed to get it from the firm.

In a country like Ethiopia, who has such a marvelous history, where people love each other, support each other, share their meals, share their problems, who smiles when you smile and who cry when you cry, some unusual things were happening in the last decade. I was no able to see who scattered the seeds of evil in the midst of us. When the system of leadership is corrupted, once the moral ethics of some people we call them “public figures” is shaken, the whole community is in trouble.

In a family, the heads of the house (Mother and Father) have good manners, children walk after their examples. If parents are readers, children will run to grab books. They fight to pick the book or the paper their parents had been reading first. If their parents manage their angers wisely and make peace in the family and neighborhood, children grow learning all the good stuffs from them. There are many expensive things which we learn free in our homes. Love, compassion, sharing, caring ,..etc are not earned from the university, but from the lives around us. In contrast, if there is a family who plots day and night how to robe others, how to hurt a friend, how to destroy his neighbor they only recruit an offspring that destroys his own country.

Last week which started with the arrest of 40 on Friday November 09, has led to shocking revelations by the attorney general Berhanu Tsegaye of gruesome human rights violations of Ethiopians in the hands of the security, the police and the intelligence units, and a network of corruption within the Metals and Engineering Corporation (MetEC), a state owned  business monopoly managed by army officials.Ethiopia is sad. The news that we heard on the media sounds like a bad dream. In the previous years, we were listening about Developmental Government and how they create many organizations and hire many fresh graduates was a FAKE NEWS. One of them is MetEC which produces computer spare parts, buses, tank, …etc as we used to hear on the news. It was the largest company that robbed the country’s wealth and made few rich people in Ethiopia. The bosses hired only their family members, relatives and people from their birth place or region. There is no transparency, nobody say a word about the highly organized crime that eats up the country’s wealth.

Last year when we celebrate the Victory of Adwa, two people from MetEC came and spoke about this company’s fame. They were telling us how they produce so many extra ordinary products and poured a large amount of hard currency in to the country’s economy and this company made Ethiopia proud in East Africa. HOW DARE THEY?! This company is part of the ministry of defense.  The company bought ten international hotels. I guess they aim to collect as much as hard currency they can in different investment for themselves.

When one of Ethiopian ships gets old, our shipping lines offered to sale it for a foreign company. This company intervenes, and sent the ship to get fixed to abroad and paid $27,000,000.00 then the same company sold it for $2,500,000.00. What uncanny jock!!!( This is one of the stories, but too many shocking stories will be uncovered soon.)

The Ethiopian shipping line workers were saying on their interview: “We were sitting in the office just for samples; every mission was running by MetEC.”

When I enter in every governmental organization office, “Accountability, transparency, self initiation, commitment…all the good words are posted in front of every door. They supposed to hang those papers upside down according the service they rendered. In every small office when you need a signed paper, you should give some bribe. Imagine, we had to get signed paper from Kebele Offices to paint our gate, to fix our wall, etc. All this was organized to open a way for corruption for people who has small offices in our areas.

 When you want to open business, we used to go to Ministry of Trade to get a license. I should start from Kebele Office to get TIN number, then I’ll go to Ministry of Revenue to show my blue print for the business office, they will give me trade registration certificate, I carry this and go to another Minister Office to apply for Certificate of efficiency. (Eg:  If I want to export sesame , I’ll be applying at Ministry of Agriculture.) The Minister Office workers never allow you to get this unless …after that you’ll go back to Ministry of Trade and Industry to apply for the license. Some people took them five years to get their license. The system had been demoralizing the working and creative society. You have got a market in abroad, and you process for three-five years for license. Who is going to sit and wait for that? You will lose the business or your business ideas will be snatched by others. Their strategy swells the pockets of the corrupted civil masters.

The victory of ADWA earned by GREAT WOMAN QUEEN TAYITU BITUL and her husband KING MINILIK who didn’t want wealth, but loved their mother land and their nation. Minilik respected his servants; let his servant eat before him wherever he was invited on big feasts. He taught his ministers to take care of the people who served them and all his ministers followed his examples.

When we were on a war with Italians, Queen Tayitu was acting like Prime Minister and Defense Minister. She cancelled the Wochale Agreement and saved her people from being colonized. Both the Queen and the King didn’t stole any money from their country and hide it away to their children or their relatives. To be a leader is to serve a nation, not to robe your nation and make them poor.

When our so called public figures try to compare themselves with Quenn Tayitu and King Minilik’s job, that makes me sick. For no reason, that day when they were bragging about their story at the City Hall, I felt uncomfortable. I was saying; “If MetEC did something big, it has to celebrate it on its day.”

I see this week we have many Gobbles. They were telling us big lies every day. As a nation, as a country, we are all ashamed of the story we heard the other day. It is heart breaking to all of us.

All these stories uncover by the young leader who was brought by one wise mother who is full of wisdom. She raised him properly to live peacefully and to be kind to everyone. He admired the wisdom and energy of the Ethiopian mothers. He saw women are not close to corruption and invited women to hold the power and bring a change in the government. We have ten female Ministers right now, they are chosen by our young Prime Minister Dr. Abiy Ahimed. We were glad to hear about all this and I was preparing to publish the joy of the women in Ethiopia.

We had another Breaking News; Ethiopia has got her first female President Mrs. Sehlework Zewdie. All the women who are given the power have good reputation in the area they had been working for years. I’m glad to hear that women are celebrated in my country. I can’t express my joy to have a Prime Minister who acknowledges women’s capability of leadership.

Ethiopia had many powerful Queens, who made history in her land.

In this beautiful place, to see people who had been working for their pocket and for individuals made all of us uneasy.

Journalists had been kidnapped and were victimized without court orders and a police arrest. We had people who reigned above the law. Female journalists had been raped. Families of people who write stories that show the corrupted systems of the government were threatened or forced to live the country. Time has come to all these scary stories to come out and broadcast by our own government Medias.

My beloved country, may God shine His light up on you.